This post was written by Brooke Benoit and originally published on her blog.This Ramadan is hard. Right smack in the middle of summer, these are the longest fasts of my Muslim life, it’s hot, and the kids are home all day. Well, my kids are always home all day, but I’m sure that’s an extra challenge for most Ramadaners.I have six children and they are currently kind of a mess. My eldest two want to just stay up all night so as to not miss suhoor and indeed they are very hard to wake for s … [Read more...]

Help I'm alive...We're late. My favourite popular imam has already begun leading the second rakat for Qiyam ul-layl, the night prayers. We dash from the car and run across the street, our feet soon gliding upon smooth marble floors at the largest mosque in Kuwait.My sister-in-law leads the way. One hand holds a chair for our pregnant cousin and the other clutches her black abaya as she power-walks ahead. A corner is turned and the scent of cardamom laced coffee brings a smile to my fa … [Read more...]

Ramadan is one month long, but one month is not long enough for me to convince myself that I am not responsible for my mother’s illness. On the second fast I keep, she goes to the hospital. My hands tremble during Isha that night. I remind myself that Ramadan is also about recovery.But we do not recover. We let the sickness sink in, and then we live in it – with a positive outlook because that is my gracious, optimistic, ever wonderful mother. We live in it with weekly blood tests and pat … [Read more...]

"When you're in the moment, just dance. This isn't the time to think about the choreography or to worry about whether you're doing it right. You can think about those later. But when it's time to dance, forget everything else, and just do it. Ignore everything else, and just be in the moment." The teacher who had come from out of town to lead a few workshops several years ago was talking about tap dancing, but as she spoke, what I was hearing wasn't advice on how to dance. What I heard was … [Read more...]

This was written by Peter Gray and originally appeared at his blog.Wouldn’t it be amazing to zigzag across the country, visiting mosques and writing about the people that use them? Aman Ali and Bassam Tariq thought so. Now they are on the second leg of a Ramadan road trip fueled by faith, food, and good old-fashioned male privilege. Recently, in an attempt to explore the gender divide in Muslim places of worship, the duo documented the women’s area of a mosque that hosted them in Little … [Read more...]